“As soon as I left it dawned on me that she already lives with me.” – Ford Cragun

Already There

There are all kinds of bridges in this world.  I was on one of them yesterday in Columbus, Ohio.  It was the Main Street Bridge.

The Main Street Bridge was the site of the Columbus Fiery Foods Festival.  It’s a show case and tasting event for, mostly, hot sauces.  The day before walking that bridge I brought a couple of my own homemade hot sauces, Ghost Pepper and Fiery Smoked Habanero, as a gift to my daughter Annie.  That’s when she surprised me with her own gift; labels she designed and made for my sauces.  “Loose Nut Hot Sauces.”  

And, the next day we were off to the fiery bridge to taste hundreds of other offerings, savors and sights hoping for some inspiration for new Loose Nut tastes to enjoy.  That being said, perhaps I should have also said insights!

You see, I’d had lunch with my friend Ford Cragun the week before leaving for Columbus. It was another spicy affair since we were dining at Wright’s Barbeque on NE 3rd Street.  The food was great, as always, and the spicy flavors seemed to loosen Ford’s tongue a little too!  As we talked and ate he had a message flash across his telephone screen and then his face.  It was from one of his daughters.  The flashed messages shifted our conversation to another direction totally, as he recounted a related story.

“My wife and I were eating dinner in a Sandy restaurant when we noticed a young woman who seemed to need help.”  He said.  “I remember thinking at the time that this woman needed shelter.  Not just a roof over her head, but refuge; a place where she could find respite.”

It was just a feeling he had.  He didn’t know her or her circumstance directly, so he didn’t feel comfortable approaching a complete stranger to see if she needed help.  So, Ford and his wife left the eatery and got in their car to drive home.  They hadn’t driven far when he had a thought.

“As soon as I left it dawned on me that ‘she’ already lives with me.  She’s already there in my home.” Ford said, with tears in his eyes.

That was the moment he crossed a bridge toward a new relationship with his daughter!  With one brief dawning of understanding he learned something extraordinary.

“I learned then that I had been able to accept strangers.  But, I hadn’t been able to extend the same kind of unconditional love and compassion toward my own daughter!  It was as if this mental and emotional ‘dawning’ created an undiscovered bridge for me to cross; a new approach to help someone precious to me!”

There are all kinds of bridges in this world.  I was on one of them yesterday in Columbus, Ohio.  It was the Main Street Bridge where I was enjoying a fiery foods festival.  That Bridge was the site of the Columbus Annual Fiery Foods Festival.  It’s a show case and tasting event for, mostly, hot sauces.  The day before walking the bridge I brought a couple of my own homemade hot sauces, Ghost Pepper and Fiery Smoked Habanero, as a gift to my daughter Annie.  She surprised me with her own gift; labels she designed and made for them.  “Loose Nut Hot Sauces.”  

Just one week earlier, Ford introduced me to another kind of bridge, a relationship bridge. And, it seems as if, perhaps there’s a little loose nut in all of us.  After all, we all have fiery relationships with those we love at one time or another and there are lots of ways to bridge potential fissures with our loved ones.  

Just remember that in many cases, such bridges of understanding are already available right in our own homes.  Sometimes, they just need to dawn on us.

“Since my wife was diagnosed with cancer it has become easy for us to see who really cares about us.” – Jay Blackshear

Who Cares

Sometimes, keeping the home fires burning requires help from the outside, even when there is a wood burning stove inside.  I was inside such a home a couple of days ago.

I was walking with Jay Blackshear last Wednesday in his home, which is located high in remote mountains.  It was there, in the otherwise empty living room, I saw a wood and coal burning stove, most often used in Amish and Mennonite homes.  This dual-fuel home fire stove has the ability to keep an entire home warm using either type of fuel.  But it is this stove’s ability to automatically and slowly feed the fire with small amounts of low-sulphur coal that makes it an appliance of high value.  That’s because It eliminates the need to stoke the fire in the middle of the night, or when the residents are out for an extended period of time.  After all, everyone likes to enjoy warm refuge in a cozy home after they’ve been out in the cold!  But, Jay was about to teach me about different kinds of warmth; like friendship.

“We got back home yesterday at six a.m.” Jay said.  “Since my wife was diagnosed with cancer it has become easy for us to see who really cares about us.”

Jay and his wife, Christine had been in the emergency room for four of the last six nights!  I could see the fatigue in his eyes as he told me of how the medication provided by her doctors had caused her condition to worsen.

“I don’t blame them!”  He explained.  “They’re doing the best they can.”

I was glad to be there with him.  I mostly just listened to his heroic tale.  It was a story that began in Mexico where he was pastoring a church after leaving their home in Texas.  They had been there for two years before he came home one day to find his wife sobbing.  She was not feeling well!  So, they left the church they had built together and he brought her back to Texas, so they could be with family and friends.  It was there that they began trudging on her long road toward recovery.

Part of this path to recovery led them to the top of serene mountains.  The peace of the place made a difference for her health.  It made a difference for their family.  The medications she was on seemed to be making progress in battle.  Until, there was an unwelcome change.

When her physicians changed her medication, her body revolted.  She crashed into medical crisis.  They were fighting for her life, spending seemingly unending hours not able to stoke the fires supporting the comforting life of home.

“We thought the neighbors around us would demonstrate their care for us by offering encouragement.”  Jay said with pain laced with his vocalization.  “But the people we thought cared for us most never came!  It’s been mostly friends and family from a far.  We’ve also had people from the fringe of our lives, people we’ve recently met who’ve come to support us.”

It is this kind of friendly support, just lending a listening ear and being there to sit with them for a while that makes the difference.  Such kindness slowly, steadily feeds small amounts of love that keeps their home fires burning, while they haven’t the strength to keep them aglow alone.

“Just receiving a short call from a friend to check in with us makes all the difference!”  Jay emotionalized through his voice.

Sometimes, keeping the home fires burning requires help from the outside, even when there is a wood burning stove inside.  I was inside such a home a couple of days ago.

I was walking with Jay Blackshear last Wednesday in his home, which is located high in remote mountains.  It was there, in the otherwise empty living room, I saw a wood & coal burning stove and Jay.  We were keeping his home fires burning, together.

“Caden starts kindergarten on Monday, it’s a big milestone for all of us!” – Sam Baker

Relationship Art

“It’s a big milestone for all of us!”  Sam said as he excitedly shared that Caden, his oldest child, was going to be starting kindergarten on the coming Monday.

“Enjoy it!”  I said.

I wasn’t surprised to see that Sam, a Senior Merchandise Financial Planning Manager at the world’s larger retailer, was paying such attention to the small details of living.  Because, Sam is an attendant to the little things in business and life.  

During our talk this morning he shared his “Making Little Things Matter Tips; ways to focus on being a little more thoughtful every day.”

First. “Ask how people like to be communicated with.  I know it may sound as if it is a little over the top, but let me tell you a little story!” Sam went on to elucidate by telling the story of how when one of his friends would never respond to the voice mail messages he left, he finally asked for his friend’s preferred method of communication.  “My friend told me he communicates almost entirely through texting. When I made that simple shift, my frustration ended!”  Sam said.  “Making that small change allowed me to demonstrate my commitment to our relationship; that I was in it for the long haul.”

Second. Manage relationships with a long-term-view. “This means being in it for the other person.”  Sam explains.  “It means staying connected by showing genuine interest in what’s happening in other people’s lives. It means listening to them.”  

Third. “I keep practicing the art of having, predominantly, one-sided conversations in relationships.” Sam teaches.  “That means listening to other people at least ten times more than I talk.  I hope I’m becoming more of a ‘relationship artist’ by behaving like this in an intentional way.” 

Fourth. “Relationship Artists create a prearranged schedule of activities.”  Sam says. We have a family council on a preset day and time each week.  It lets all family members know what’s going on behind the scenes.  Everyone gets a turn to give an update.”  Sam went on to explain a discovered side benefit when he started this practice. “Doing so also lets everyone sacrifice for each other in a small way, because we all need to be flexible, to give-and-take around everyone’s schedule.”

Fifth. “Put your significant other’s important events in your calendar. Take time to comment on social media posts at least once each day. I’ve found that even just posting a ‘like’ makes the people I’m in relationship with feel special.  It’s a tangible way to show I’m engaged in their living.”

Finally. “Recognize and celebrate happy events and be there to support them during sad moments.”  Sam counsels.  “Just be there with them. There’s most often no need solve their problem or give them an unsolicited solution.  Just be there. I love the story of Job, in the Bible, because it describes about how his friends just sat with him for days, without talking, when everything in Job’s life was crashing!”  Acting in such a devoted way would be a landmark moment for any Relationship Artist.

So, as a Relationship Artist, Sam will just be there for Caden’s first day of kindergarten! 

“Caden starts kindergarten on Monday, it’s a big milestone for all of us!”   

“It saddens me that any of us need to be convinced to be gentle” – Phillip Snyder

Gentile Impression

“Ugh, I don’t want to talk about this one. Ok, here it goes.” Phillip Snyder said before diving in to an explanation.

He started with a growing-up-reminiscence of how his parents would sometimes watch reruns of shows they loved. “The Waltons” was one of their favorites. And, Phillip has had one scene from an episode he watched with his parents stick with him for nearly twenty years, hereafter.

In that well remembered television-show-scene, Ruth, a girl made recently blind by an accident, is in the middle of meeting the Walton family and makes observations about each person, in the Walton family, as she holds their hands. When she gets to Grandpa Walton, she holds one hand and carefully feels the callouses of his palm and comments that he must be a hard worker. Then, feeling the smoothness of the back of his hand, she said, “He must be a gentle and kind man.”

“A hard worker and a kind man!” Phillip exclaims as he fully expresses his heart-felt admiration for such traits.  “People should work hard at whatever work they engage in; and, perhaps more importantly, be gentle with and kind to all they come into contact with.”

“And yet,” He continues, “I wonder how true that is for many of us. I mean, speaking for myself, I spent the last two years during this pandemic doing far more complaining and criticizing than I did engaging in the work of being gentle and kind; feeding the needy, spending time with the sick, bringing encouragement to the depressed.”

Phillip then asked me what I thought my own hands would reveal to Ruth.  Would Ruth feel my hands as if they are the opposite of Grandpa Walton’s, or would they feel the same as his to her own gentle touch? 

Two days later, I found myself wondering about the importance of being gentle as I conversed with another friend. He told me he was intending to use his “talent for having a big mouth to confront his local city council.”

As soon as his words touched my ears, Phillip’s questions came into my heart again.

“Would we find ourselves so prone to criticism and rudeness if we had our hands to the plow? If we were working hard to build up the people around us, to share our possessions, to meet the needs of our community?  If our hands were attached to Grandpa Walton’s plow would we even find a moment for our hearts to harden and for harshness to come from our lips?”

So, in that same spirit, I made an invitation to my currently talking friend.  “You know, I think I have that same talent for speaking my mind.  And, for the first time in my life I’m beginning to receive insight into the value of being gentle and spreading gentleness.  Let’s see if you and I can find a certain rerun of ‘The Waltons,’ the episode where Ruth, a newly-eye-sightless girl, describes Grandpa Walton as a hard-working, gentle and kind man. Then, let’s watch it together. Let’s see if we can feel what Ruth felt.” 

“It saddens me that any of us need to be convinced to be gentle.” Phillip Snyder said again, to my heart, as soon as my invitation was offered.  “I hope Ruth would feel kindness on my hands.  I hope she would be touched by their gentle impression!”

Madison Austin repurposes prom dresses by redesigning & updating them before she gifts them to others.

Transformation Style

As soon as Madison Austin received her first sewing machine she began to dream.  And, work.  She was eight years old then.  That was also the same year she dreamed, designed and crafted her first prom dress.  That inaugural, full length dress was white and lacey; just like her smile.

“The whole process was a transformation for me!”  Madison (Maddy) says with a wistful look.

That longing-like expression didn’t last too long, as she changed back into the twenty-two-year old woman she is today, instantaneously.  She’s not that little girl any longer.  She’s a senior at the University of Arkansas and will start law school next year.  A lot has changed for her, but one thing hasn’t changed.  She still loves to create prom dresses, transformation style.

“She takes donated prom dresses that have been sitting in a closet somewhere and modernizes them.”  Her grandmother explained.  “Sometimes she’ll take two or three of them and fashion them into something fresh and wonderful!”

Once the transformation is complete Maddy gives them to a young woman who cannot afford to purchase such a dress.  Perhaps it would have been best to say that Maddy begins a transformation by redesigning the dresses.  The final transformation comes as she gifts her new creation.

“I love the whole process of transformation even more now!”  Maddy exclaims.  “When I see the beneficiary’s face change, as she opens her gift, it’s as if I’ve become part of something magical!”

That magic, Maddy describes, is spreading through others now as well.

“I’m going to donate makeup to these women.”  Her friend, Donna, chipped in as we were watching Maddy work as a model.  “And, we have a friend who is a hair artist who has just jumped into our little gig!”

 

No.  Madison isn’t that little girl anymore.  At least on the outside.  She has transformed herself, as well as many others beyond herself.  And, that’s a testament to strength of the real magic that powers genuine transformation.  It is so meaningful that it simply can’t be contained.

As soon as Madison Austin received her first sewing machine something transformational began to happen.  She was eight years old then.  That was also the same year she dreamed, designed and crafted her first prom dress.  That first full length dress was white and lacey; just like her smile.

“The whole process was a transformation for me!”  Maddy said with a wistful look, before she went to work her magic on the runway as a model.

And, her magic doesn’t stop there.  Hers is a powerful, genuine transformation, of such influence that it gifts transformation to others.  Many others.